The American Civil Rights Movement

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2006 im Fachbereich Amerikanistik - Kultur und Landeskunde, Note: 2, Universität Hamburg (Anglistik und Amerikanistik), Veranstaltung: American Civil Rights Movement, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: In March 1958, a pacifistic group named "The Fellowship of Reconciliation" that had provided most of CORE's early leaders sent James Lawson to Nashville to lead a workshop in non-violence for African-American activists. A year later, as a divinity student at Nashville's Vanderbilt University, Lawson drew a small but morally charged number of young men and women from the black colleges to his regular training sessions in non-violent protest1. In the fall of 1959, this Nashville student group stages test sit-ins at segregated city restaurants and lunch counters. Staying just long enough to draw refusal of service, they failed either to change management policy or to draw others into the protest. Lawson had outrun the zeitgeist by a few months. With the Greensboro sit-ins of February 1960, though, the Nashville group acquired a prophetic luster. Soon Lawson was directing hundreds of students who volunteered in disciplined protests against segregation in downtown stores.